I, being late to this party, find it's mostly all been said already.
It seems everyone agrees on most of the mentioned equipment.
Always remember, no highs... no lows... it must be Bose.
I don't see Eico as having been under rated, I just think they lacked sales due to improper marketing. Same with some of the other lesser brands, such as Pilot.
I had an Eico HF-53 mono UL EL34 amp. It was kick azz! I sold it to a guy in Canada. Now I wish I still had it. The OT on that thing was the big secret to good sound.
Eico ST-70, IMO, was great. Not too many of them around.
One that nobody seems to know about, but brings good money on ebay, but is rare, is the amp I like most, (mostly because I have them) is the venerable Heathkit AA-121. Again, great iron in them makes for good sound.
And the preamp designed to go with it, the Heathkit AA-141A is a very rare bird. But best tube preamp I've ever heard in use. Especially if you like lots of bass response available for those certain moments...
Another Heathkit people don't seem to pay attention to, but is a great performer, is the AA-100.
Mark D.

I noticed Yamaha mentioned above. What about the 1984 Yamaha equipment I have?

Many manufacturers had cheapened their equipment by then but Yamaha was always a step above most, even then. The "natural sound" was not just a marketing gimmick. I sold the brand from 1979 to 1985. They had some tape decks, not all, that had issues but other than that, I liked them and had no problem selling them. They were probably the best mid-grade stuff around. Had an A-500 integrated amp that satisfied me for a long time and working at a stereo shop, I was always tempted.

ggreg, I see you are in Minnesota - I also bought my Magnepan MG III speakers in 1984 along with the Yamaha electronics. I need a belt for the tape deck, but the dbx technology in it is more pleasing than the Dolby technology.

Eico had some pretty good engineers in their audio department, and Heathkit no doubt had a couple as well.

wow. cant agree with some recurring statements here.

first off the marantz SS gear bashing. most of it was underrated spec wise and capable of more than marants admitted to. as somebody that likes their music loud, the marantz stuff from the 70's all had a common trait. play it loud and it barely got warm. it was overbuilt. a great many (and i have owned over 20 70's era marantzes) that come my way still work regardless of how abused they look.

dynaco. it was built to a price point. did what it was intended to do and did it well for the money.

my choices...
overrated = BOSE. wanna embarrass a BLOWS salesman? bring a rock cd with plenty of kick drum and mid bass. lets see how the subwoofer and tiny speaker system figures out what to do with it.

underrated = magnavox tube console amps. no wonder they are hot on ebay. a little time spent on refurbing it and some minor mods and they actually sound really nice on modern speakers.

I suspect EICO was underrated by its dealers because there was more markup in the 'prestige' brands. It was a fallback for salesmen when the customer says "that's too expensive" about what they're pushing. Unless you read audio mags and knew what EICO was, your odds of finding out at the dealer level were low.

IMO, Crown is overrated as 'listening' equipment. I get the concensus today that DC150 or 300 are considered good utility amps for reinforcement, but fatiguing if you actually listen to them. Plus they were very costly.

I think that Crown was a bit better in their pro audio line.
I've found that some pro-audio equipment gives a lot more bang for the buck than expensive home audio equipment. I'm thinking of my old 1980's something 600 watt QSC amp. It likes to pop output transistors, but when it's working, I like it. I like my lower powered tube amps better, though.
Mark D.

I had a nice pair of Pilot AA-908 power amps along with the 215 pre-amp. These amps had huge iron, must have weighed 50# each. I foolishly sold them not realizing how rare they were and although I got a good buck for them I regret selling them. I also had a pair of Eico HF-20 which I thought were under rated, they had an output transformer that seemed capable of at least twice that of the 20 watt rating.

Magnapans, the pride of White Bear Lake. Knew a few guys who would rather cut off their left leg than give up their Mags. Wives/GF's hated them because it was like having two window frames in the living room. They didn't really do it for me but I sold plenty of them. I've sold higher end speakers like Magnapans, Vandersteens, etc. but personally I always liked the JBL L series and the Pioneer HPM's which were basically very good copies. Tells you what kind of music I listened to right there... But, I think speakers are something we all could argue about because we all have differing opinions on what is "good" or "great" and I liked it that way. Thinking about it my friends Yamaha NS-1000's were probably one of the best speakers I heard in that era. He still has them and they still are awesome. We were kids then, and he actually took out a loan to buy them. He had two years worth of speaker payments. My how times have changed. I still use Klipsch KG-4's topped off with some newer Paradigm Titans and I don't think I ever get anything any different.

The dbx worked great in Yamahas, actually the electronics were fine. What happened was during a redesign, they used a faulty switch pad in the mechanism control. Nearly all of them failed within 1-2 years. It was only used in the cheaper decks up to and including the K-500. The bigger ones didn't have the problem. Within a year the problem was solved but the damage was done. It was a very un-Yamaha problem and I think they overbuilt their decks after that to make up for it, for a while anyway.

I stopped speaker shopping at L100 in 1977. The 'port sound' is equalizable with a parametric. Bottom octave up, second octave down. Wish I'd gotten the slot tweets while they were still priced sanely, but frankly I can't hear above 12k now anyway.

Sorry. I have to disagree. I was actually going to list Luxman as highly overrated. When I bought my first integrated amp back in the late 1970's I checked out a Luxman and also a Pioneer. They both were rated about same for power, but the Luxman had a very noisy preamp. If you turned up the volume with no program playing, the hiss was unbearable.
The salesman's comment: "Isn't that fantastic high frequency response?"
Me: "No thanks. I'll see you later," and I ran for the door.

Cranking the volume to max on the Pioneer there was no audible noise whatsoever. Distortion spec's were similar on both units, but the Pioneer was $60 cheaper. So I bought the Pioneer and never regretted it. I'm still using it today as my secondary system.

Now it may well be that the Luxman model that I checked out, happened to be a particularly crappy one, but it left a lasting impression. On the other hand, I know of quite a few people who were pleasantly surprised with the quality of Pioneer amps, considering their relatively low price.

So my vote for underrated, is Pioneer.

I disagree. I sold them for 5 years and never came across the situation you described. Probably a bad piece and a stupid salesman. Pioneers were fine up to about 1980 but Lux and Yamaha could blow the doors off them. I sold all three at the same time.

This is absolutely true. Eico themselves used the same output transformer in the HF22, rated at 22 watts per channel, and the HF35, which with EL34s and rated at 35w, was almost twice the power of the HF20. I can't find the reference, but I remember seeing a report where someone had tested one of these output transformers... and found it capable of handling 46 watts output, before signs of saturation in the low-bass started to appear.

Dick Olsher (famous designer) has stated that he considers the Eico HF22 to be a "component of exceptional merit"... placing it in the same frame of reference as the famous Harman-Kardon Citation II amp, as, in his opinion, about the best two amps of the 1960s. If I had a HF20, IMHO, I'd just convert the circuit over to HF22 spec... it's got some great parts there...

Regards,
Gordon.

[quote="ke4mcl"]my choices...
overrated = BOSE. wanna embarrass a BLOWS salesman? bring a rock cd with plenty of kick drum and mid bass. lets see how the subwoofer and tiny speaker system figures out what to do with it.

LOL i can see it now.20 seconds of Nile and it would be a smouldering pile on your bench.

I know someones probably going to jump on me for this but i've always really liked Pioneer and Akai.Akai mainly because it was me first real stereo although they did make good TT.

Most overrated-Bose and Yamaha.I've never heard a good sounding Yamaha product be it guitar amp,home stereo or studio equipment.

As for Bose, what can i say that hasen't already been said.

Nick

Nobody mentioned Altec so far. Most of their stuff was very good, not only the speakers, but the mixers and amps. The tube versions are scarce and probably overpriced, but the transistorized versions are available for very little. Of course no glow to watch.

I've never heard a good Peavy or a bad Acoustic.

If you mean PA speakers, I agree with you, but I thought we were talking about hi-fi.

Yep. Peavy is a brand that has tried to get into the pro audio business. Not hi-fi. They'd never make it in hi-fi.
And the post on Altec Lansing got my attention too. They're good stuff, but again, if I'm not mistaken, it's pretty much geared toward pro-audio isn't it? Or have they become more like JBL and gone both ways?
I've found that some pro-audio stuff can really kick azz when used as home audio equipment. Some, like most of the offerings from Crate, or Peavy, doesn't really fit in either IMO.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Mark D.

There is a lot of stuff that can be mixed and matched and sound good. It just seemed like we were veering a little too far off the beaten track but oh well.

I sold pro audio too a few years back. Crate and Peavey are built to a price point. So is Fender. You get what you pay for most of the time. There are probably more CS800's running around than just about any other pro audio amp so Peavey can't be that bad. I know they can take a real licking and keep on ticking which is sometimes more important to a gigging band than ultimate sound. I must say Accoustic was great sounding for the price.